Chapter Eleven Fran
Eleven
Fran
The Hurt Waist
RJ was the biggest germaphobe Fran had ever met.
He wouldn’t drink out of a cup his own children had used.
He wouldn’t take a lick of Fran’s ice cream.
He preferred to have his own tube of toothpaste, and he would rather have slammed a screen door on his finger than partake of a shared bowl of dip at a party.
The guy was deathly afraid of germs (unless someone passed him a bong, and then suddenly he was fine with putting his mouth all over it).
He was nuts, really, and so it shouldn’t have surprised Fran to realize that her children were growing into tiny little nutcases as well.
London had been to the school nurse so many times with so many imagined ailments over the course of the last year that Fran and the nurse had become friends.
Fran knew her coffee order, they texted each other happy birthday, and she’d even bought the woman a dog bed for her new puppy.
It seemed like London just needed a break from the classroom, and so Fran and the nurse eventually came up with a system where, unless he was bleeding, she would just let him color quietly in her office for half an hour before sending him back to class.
Unfortunately, over the summer she had taken a better-paying job working for the school in Manchester-by-the-Sea, and the nurse Greenhead hired to replace her was decidedly less interested in entertaining a seven-year-old who said his “waist hurt.” So far this year Fran had needed to pick him up early from school five times.
Fran was in the middle of a complex plan for shipping an engine kit when her phone rang.
“Hi, is this London’s mom?” The nurse’s voice was vaguely singsong.
It was like she enjoyed telling parents to come get their kids.
“There’s no emergency, but London’s not feeling so great.
We took his temperature and it’s normal, but his teacher and I have decided that he’s not himself and should go home. ”
The thing was, there was really nothing to say once the nurse had decided your kid needed to leave.
You could push back, you could insist they hold your kid in the office for the day, but then you just looked like a bad parent.
Also, with Fran’s luck, it would be the one time he actually had appendicitis.
When Fran arrived at the school, London at least had the decency to look embarrassed. He coughed and gave the nurse a little wave as he followed Fran back to the car. “How ya doing, bud?” She kissed his forehead, and it was cool and dry, no fever.
“I’m okay. It’s just pain in my waist.”
“Did you eat your lunch too fast?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I had too much water? Like, I got too hydrated?”
“That’s not very likely.”
“Well, maybe I burped hard.”
“Okay.” Fran sighed.
She buckled him into the back seat and instead of driving him home where he would be underfoot as she worked, she decided to take him out to RJ’s job site so that he could keep an eye on him instead.
Eben and Max had bought a massive house on Great Neck with water views and a kitchen that hadn’t been touched since the 1980s.
Eben had hired RJ to handle the renovation—of course—and together they spent hours and hours discussing the merits of a gas fireplace versus electric, a wine cave versus a mudroom. It was both very boring and very sweet.
When Fran pulled up to the house, Eben’s Jeep was parked out front right next to RJ’s truck.
“Hey dude, why aren’t you at school?” Eben greeted them at the door and gave London a fist bump.
“I have a hurt waist,” London said sheepishly, and slid past to find RJ.
“God, I hate when my waist hurts.” Eben hugged Fran hello.
“Sometimes I just get achy fingernails.”
“I get earlobe pain.” They snickered and Eben and Fran walked around, checking out the new floors, the kitchen island, the Italian marble going into the bathrooms. Eben looked a lot like his sister, Augusta.
They had the same fair skin, freckled in the summer, the same light hair, Augusta’s slightly more strawberry, Eben more blond.
They were both slim and lanky, gawky as teenagers, but they had grown into their features.
While he showed her the new fixtures, Eben flexed his fingers, cracking the knuckles, a gesture Fran had seen him do thousands of times, and it made her smile.
It was funny, they had been out of high school for more than a decade, she and Eben were now friends, their lives totally intertwined, but Fran always felt that she knew him better than he realized.
Maybe it was because he was Augusta’s older brother, because he, Colin, and Van had been so popular, so adored by the younger girls in school.
She and the others in her grade had regarded the three of them the way most people would minor celebrities, keeping tabs on who they were dating, which parties they went to, who got caught sneaking beer into a White Stripes concert.
When Van and Bailey started hooking up sophomore year it felt like Bruce Springsteen pulling Courtney Cox onstage, like she had been chosen.
When Colin would say hi to them in the halls, Augusta and Fran would grin like idiots.
In retrospect it was wild how obsessed they had all been with three guys who thought Mike’s Hard Lemonade was a fancy thing to bring to a party.
“Did you hear about Van?” Eben asked, his voice getting quiet as if Van might suddenly pop out of the pantry.
“No, what happened?” Fran asked curiously.
“He and Caroline broke up last week.” Eben looked flushed with guilt to be gossiping.
“No fucking way.” Fran was shocked. She thought they were a good pair and it seemed like she and Van had already done the hard part, had already decided to stay together after the pregnancy news, after the birth. “Do you know why? Is she moving or something?”
“I think the situation was just too weird—Van feeling pulled in two different directions.”
Fran nodded. “Kids change everything.”
“Yep.” Eben seemed to get it too, seemed to know Caroline had been a good thing for Van, but it felt traitorous to say more behind his back, so they looked at each other sadly and then carried on with the tour, Eben showing her the primary bedroom, the office, the guest room, and then a small room that he referred to as “the nursery.”
“Where are you guys with the surrogate decision?” Fran asked. For a few months Eben and Max had been going back and forth, Eben wanting to adopt, Max wanting to have their own with a surrogate.
“The surrogate thing is so complicated. It also means choosing an egg donor.”
“Would you ever think about asking Augusta for an egg?”
“No.” Eben frowned. “The genetic factor makes it risky. If we used my sister’s egg, the baby could be born with a stick up its butt.”
Fran laughed. “I’ve heard that’s a concern.
” It made Fran happy that Eben and Max were renovating this house.
She had wondered over the years if Greenhead was gay enough for them, if Eben felt like he could live in the place he’d grown up.
He had dated women in high school and Fran figured it was because coming out back then would have been hard.
Sure, there were students who were out, but none of them seemed to be particularly thriving.
Mostly kids seemed to stay closeted until they left town for college.
But now Eben was making his dream home, planning to raise a family ten minutes away from the pink house where he grew up.
Fran felt proud of the way Greenhead had changed, and then dumb for being proud—what had they all really done other than follow along with the changing times?
Fran and Eben found London in the great room reviewing the contents of his backpack.
“What do you have there, bud?” Eben crouched down to take a closer look.
“It’s a Bulbasaur Pokémon card. This one is really rare. By the time I’m a grown-up it could be worth probably a thousand dollars. Or like fifty thousand.”
“Wow.” Fran and Eben exchanged grins. “Are you sure it’s safe to carry that thing around?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t.” London looked worried.
“Nah, you’ll take good care of it.” Eben patted his shoulder.
“Show us what else you’ve got in there.” Together they sifted through London’s assortment: a tiny plastic catapult from inside a Kinder egg, a navy rubber bracelet with the Red Sox logo, a latex puddle of fake vomit, a Lego Batman figure, the Pokémon card, and the map.
“Wow.” Fran admired his treasures. Her house was full of this exact detritus, remnants from birthday party goodie bags, plastic junk traded at school, beloved garbage collected all along her children’s travels, all destined for the landfill—if Fran could ever get them to throw it away.
It was two o’clock and Fran wanted to get back online before her boss noticed she was away from her desk, so she went up to the primary bath to let RJ know she was leaving London with him.
He wasn’t there, he wasn’t in the guest bath, and Fran was confused until she heard voices outside, RJ’s laugh unmistakable.
She found him on the third-floor deck smoking a joint with the tile guy, admiring the view across the bay.
“Hey!” He scooped her into a hug. “What are you doing here?”
“London wasn’t feeling well so I picked him up from school.
I was thinking I’d leave him with you for the afternoon.
” Fran cocked her head to the side, surveying the scene.
The joint was mostly gone, a pack of American Spirits rested on the railing alongside a lighter and an empty bottle of Gatorade with a few butts in the bottom.
Seemed liked they’d been out here for a while.